"Enough, monsieur, enough!"
"Good! Good! You did not—I shall suppose you did not, and I feel better at ease. Otherwise, you see, I would have been compelled to say to you, humbly, respectfully, as becomes poor people of my class: Pardon me, my young seigneur, for the great freedom that I am taking, but you see, the daughters of the good bourgeois are not to be seduced in that way. Since about fifty years ago, that sort of thing can no longer be done, not at all, absolutely not. Monsieur Duke, or Monsieur Marquis still calls the bourgeois, men and women, of St. Denis Street rather familiarly dear Monsieur Thing, dear Madam Thing, looking, with habitual race conceit, upon the bourgeoisie as an inferior species. But, zounds! To go further than that would no longer be prudent! The bourgeois of St. Denis Street are no longer afraid, as once they were, of lettres de cachet to the Bastille. And if Monsieur Duke, or Monsieur Marquis took it into his head to be discourteous to them—to them or to their family—bless my soul! the bourgeois of St. Denis Street might bestow a thorough drubbing—pardon me, monsieur, for this great freedom—I said, might administer a thorough drubbing to Monsieur Marquis or Monsieur Duke—even if he were of royal or imperial lineage."
"'Sdeath, monsieur!" ejaculated the colonel, hardly able to restrain his anger, and turning pale with rage. "Are you making threats to me?"
"No, monsieur," calmly answered Lebrenn, dropping his tone of banter and proceeding in firm and dignified accents; "no, monsieur; it is not a threat, it is a lesson I am giving you."
"A lesson!" cried the Count of Plouernel, furious with rage. "A lesson! to me!"
"Monsieur, despite all your race prejudice, you are a man of honor—swear to me upon your honor that, in endeavoring to introduce yourself into my house, that in tendering your services to me, it was not your intention to seduce my daughter! Yes, swear to that upon your honor, and, admitting my mistake, I shall retract all I said."
Thrown out of countenance by the alternative offered to him, the Count of Plouernel blushed, lowered his eyes before the steady gaze of the linendraper, and remained silent.
"Oh!" said the linendraper sorrowfully, as if musing to himself, but loud enough to be heard by the Count of Plouernel. "They are incorrigible; they have forgotten nothing, learned nothing; we still are in their estimation a vanquished, conquered, subject race!"
"Monsieur!"
"Well, monsieur! I know my ground! No longer do we live in the days when, after having violated my daughter, you would have ordered me whipped with switches, and hanged afterwards before the gate of your castle, as was the practice in former centuries—and as was done to one of my own ancestors by that seigneur yonder—"